Hardware supporting Microsoft's latest DirectX API is expected to appear in the second half of this year, with DirectX 11 itself appearing alongside Windows 7 (and as an update to Windows Vista) on October 22nd.

Codemasters expects the appearance of water and other surfaces to be improved, crowd animations to be better and depth of field and shadow effects to be superior thanks to support for Shader Model 5.0 and hardware tessellation.

"We believe that the DirectX 11 feature set is too compelling to ignore, especially considering how much more it can add to the visual experience for PC gamers," said Bryan Marshall, Codemasters' chief technical officer. "The fusion of DirectX 11 with Codemasters' EGO Engine will raise the technical bar considerably in the racing genre."

For more on DiRT 2, including Digital Foundry video analysis and hands-on impressions, visit the DiRT 2 gamepage.